The present invention relates to hinges.
It is already known to provide hinges with construction according to which a turnable hinge component with the structure to which it is connected moves upwardly with respect to a stationary hinge component during opening movement and downwardly with respect to the stationary component during closing movement. This operation is achieved by way of a suitable cam structure, with the arrangement being such that the weight of the door or the like carried by the turnable hinge component acts to urge the door and turnable hinge component carrying the same to carry out the closing movement.
While certain advantages are achieved by way of a construction of the above type, such as utilizing the weight of the door itself to urge the door toward its closed position, experience has shown that the desired results are not always reliably achieved with such a construction. Thus, when structures of the above type conventionally include suitable cams, these cams do not always operate reliably. Although they are intended to have cooperating camming surfaces of relatively low friction, these surfaces do not always move freely one with respect to the other and the part which is intended to close under the force of its own weight sometime does not close fully, so that manual operations are required for manually swinging the door all the way up to its fully closed position.
In addition, when a door provided with a hinge structure of the above type is fully open, it will not reliably remain open because vibrations or the like can easily dislodge the turnable cam with respect to the stationary cam so that undesirable closing movement will result under certain conditions.